Wildfires are inevitable. They occur on a nationwide scale, with their annual devastation easily seen upon a review of California's wildfire season. Consider the Cedar Fire in San Diego County which occurred in October and November of 2003. That horrific fire killed 15 people, including one firefighter and burned more than 280,000 acres destroying 2,232 homes and 22 commercial buildings. This was just one of several devastating blazes that were part of the worst wildfire siege, for structure loss, ever to hit the state. Further, the California Department of Insurance announced that in just one month in 2007, 37,117 claims had been filed, 1,531 of those being total losses, with over $2.26 billion paid out by insurers. All of this resulted from wildfire outbreaks in Southern California in the month of October.
California's Governor Schwarzenegger's climate advisors estimate that global warming could translate wildfire property losses to as much as $42 billion a year by 2050. That figure will skyrocket to perhaps as much as $60 billion when one adds state firefighting costs.
In addition to domestic and commercial property losses, the state of California currently loses federally owned forests at a rate of more than 30,700 acres per year due to wildfires. That's equivalent to losing a forest slightly larger than a city the size of San Francisco. If this rate continues over the next 100 years, 3 million acres of forestland could be lost, being converted into brush wastelands.
Although the annual loss of land, homes and commercial buildings in the state of California is alarming, this doesn't even begin to take into account property losses on a national scale due to wildfires. If we conducted a state to state evaluation and summed the total property and financial loss attributed to wildfires, the figures would be devastating. Furthermore, if the annual property loss and financial responsibility on a national scale due to domestic and commercial structure fires were included with those resulting from wildfires the financial impact would be unimaginable, not to mention the lives lost and those financial and mental burdens left upon our nation's families.
As God-fearing scientists and responsible citizens of this world, we must not turn a blind eye to the horrific loss of life and property resulting from fires. But rather we must ask ourselves “what can I do to help solve the problem?” The presently claimed and disclosed inventive concept(s) is (are) directed to such solutions.